Craig F
Well-known member
With my usual partner in crime recovering from a minor surgery I made plans with my buddy Tex to head out this past Saturday to chase some teal and black ducks in the South Jersey salt marshes. We met up on the parkway and I was surprised to see the temperature dropping the whole ride south. 27… 22 … 15! 15 degrees at the ramp with no wind made for a nice ride out in the predawn darkness.
Pushing a decent amount of ‘color’ birds out of the creek we planned to setup in was a good sign. After finding a nice pocket that was actually iced up we set out our spread consisting of black duck, mallard, gadwall, pintail and teal decoys. Not long after legal shooting time we started to have the first groups of black ducks work us. Quickly we realized with the glassy conditions it was going to be a challenge to get the typical Jersey black ducks to finish the way we liked. We had quite a few groups at 30-ish yards that we could have easily taken but we kept passing up shots to try to get them in tight.
The first birds that worked in nicely were a pair of teal that we quickly put down and got Tex’s dog his first retrieves of the day. After a few whiffs by yours truly on a few birds we had a moment that made the day. I spotted a group of birds working down the marsh and through my binoculars could see it was five puddle ducks flying with a goose. We started calling and the five ducks peeled off and started to cup up. In the sunlight their bright green heads revealed exactly what we were looking at, five drake mallards. They pitched around and picture perfect settled into the pocket between the two of us. At 10 yards we let fly and put four on the water.
We stuck it out and had a little breeze kick up late morning and put two more mallards and our black ducks in the bag before packing it in and heading home. For a bluebird type day you can’t beat being a couple birds shy of a double limit on mallards, black ducks and teal.
Enjoy the video.
https://vimeo.com/112639310
Pushing a decent amount of ‘color’ birds out of the creek we planned to setup in was a good sign. After finding a nice pocket that was actually iced up we set out our spread consisting of black duck, mallard, gadwall, pintail and teal decoys. Not long after legal shooting time we started to have the first groups of black ducks work us. Quickly we realized with the glassy conditions it was going to be a challenge to get the typical Jersey black ducks to finish the way we liked. We had quite a few groups at 30-ish yards that we could have easily taken but we kept passing up shots to try to get them in tight.
The first birds that worked in nicely were a pair of teal that we quickly put down and got Tex’s dog his first retrieves of the day. After a few whiffs by yours truly on a few birds we had a moment that made the day. I spotted a group of birds working down the marsh and through my binoculars could see it was five puddle ducks flying with a goose. We started calling and the five ducks peeled off and started to cup up. In the sunlight their bright green heads revealed exactly what we were looking at, five drake mallards. They pitched around and picture perfect settled into the pocket between the two of us. At 10 yards we let fly and put four on the water.
We stuck it out and had a little breeze kick up late morning and put two more mallards and our black ducks in the bag before packing it in and heading home. For a bluebird type day you can’t beat being a couple birds shy of a double limit on mallards, black ducks and teal.
Enjoy the video.
https://vimeo.com/112639310
